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Superior Air Parts aims to get a piece of Lycoming's business with a soon-to-be-approved 180-hp IO-360 Vantage engine, the company said at AirVenture on Monday. For a price about the same as an IO-360 overhaul, the new Vantage engine is a bolt-up conversion for the Lycoming IO-360 used in the R and S model Skyhawks, according to Superior's Keith Chatten. He said the Vantage engine, with 100 percent factory new parts, will cost just under $25,000, including the necessary STCs. For a number of years, Superior has successfully plied the experimental market with its XP Lycoming-type four-cylinder engines. The Vantage is a certified version of the same engine.

Although Superior is Chinese-owned and has a facility in China, Chatten said the engines will contain no Chinese-sourced parts, but it does contain either finished or raw components bought on the world market. "If we could source from China high-quality aviation parts we could and we would," he said. Superior claims it can compete with a low price because it runs a small, efficient organization with low overhead. "We pride ourselves on being a very efficient operation," he said.

The Vantage engine, which Superior claims includes some improvements over the Lycoming engine it replaces, is approved for mogas and the company sees that at an important selling point. "Fuel is going to be an issue in the future and we don't intend to abandon the market. We think there ought to be freedom of choice," Chatten said. For more, see SuperiorAirParts.com.

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